In 1997 two French astronomers, Andre Baranne and Francois Launay, after a long and meticulous investigation including a search for unpublished manuscripts and the analysis of parish registers in the places where Cassegrain lived (Chartres first and then Chaudon, near Nogent-le-Roi), identified Laurent Cassegrain as the most likely candidate.
, designed to be equally removed from the prolixity of Louis Moréri and the dryness of Jean-Baptiste Ladvocat, with the imprint of Amsterdam, and professing to be the production of a "société de gens de lettres," but which, in fact, proceeded exclusively from the pen of Chaudon, and was published at Paris.